Donald Trump has said that he will not become a dictator if he becomes US president again except “on day one”, after warnings from Democrats and some Republicans that the US was in danger of becoming an autocracy if he wins the 2024 election. Fuck, well at least he’s honest on this statement
if the US actually re elect him they’re fucked
Yup, and Trump doesn’t have a choice. It’s looking more and more likely that he’s going to lose a lot of money and potentially face jail time. His only way out is to seize power. Since he’s backed himself into a corner, he’ll try everything to steal the next election, including another coup attempt.
I don’t personally think it’ll work, but on the slim chance it does many of us will be facing an existential threat which will require swift action. He’s already publicly stated that he sees leftists as vermin which need to be eradicated, and I, for one, don’t want to give him the chance to act on that threat.
Of course he has a choice.
He can choose facing the consequences of his actions.
If that’s unappealing, he can also choose to, let’s say, “pull an Epstein”.
Let’s not give him the benefit of saying this is the only “strategy” he has left, because that implies you can’t blame him for trying. Like any reasonable person in his position would do the same thing.
And that’s complete nonsense. He’s not an animal stuck in a bear trap, he’s a human being, who has been very open about his penchant for fascism long before he was charged.
The leftists need to learn how to use guns and own them. SocialistRA and liberalgunowners are communities that welcome leftist gun enthusiasts and new comers who want to learn for whatever reason.
There are plenty of “leftists” who own guns in the US.
They just don’t flaunt it around like the rightards do.
Hard to say what would have happened, but I feel like I was pretty much unaffected as an European the last time.
It is difficult to say because you do not observe the counterfactual. I would definitely say we would have progressed more on climate action if HRC had become president. Also, the culture war issues would have definitely played out differently. The Trump presidency also emboldened Putin, which may have affected the situation in Ukraine. But again, in foreign policy so many things happen simultaneously that it’s often difficult to pinpoint direct causes.
I live in europe currently, and there’s been a hard right turn here since trump seriously got on the scene. In france Macron only beat the female french trump by a small margin. In Italy, they’ve elected a hard right person as their leader, In switzerland, the right wing party is in power. Trump was the first domino to fall and now we’re going to be seeing shit like that all over.
but yeah, I was pretty much not directly affected by any of that shit that happened stateside.
If that is the objective truth, then count yourself lucky for being a white, ethno-european, climate denier.
This is the “best” America can push forward, we are already fucked. We were fucked 24 years ago.
The right wing in America has been sliding further right for a long time, and tending to drag the left along with it. (Nobody is under the impression that the US “left” isn’t actually center-right.) In the last decade, that rightward silde has accelerated. Trump, being the presumptive Republican nominee for president, is the “best” that the lunatic far right - not America - can push forward.
The Democratic party, representing the left center-right, is no longer allowing itself to be dragged further right. And there remains a fairly large proportion of people who still call themselves Republicans who oppose the burgeoning fascism. Those are the people who feel politically homeless right now; they just need someplace to go and someone to vote for. Liz Cheney is floating a third party run, and I think she’s easily able to consolidate “sane conservative” support.
I was predicting that the Republican party would split back in 2015. I had no idea they would drag on like this for so long.
Let’s not demonize Trump man, he really brought what a lot of people thought would be a culture war into an economic war, which you may think is bad, but it’s actually brought a more muted epiphany for many across both sides that for many people jobs are very important to their lives, unlike in EU where places like Scandinavia, Spain or Greece see culture wars as mud to be stepped on and brushed off but economic sanction is a more realistic declaration of conflict of interest
I don’t think the American people would ever let a Dictator get that far. If Trump gets nominated by the GOP you’ll see so much violence that by election day the entire course of history in the United States will be forever changed. I personally believe the GOP will not let him be nominated and will reject him. Trump will run third party and split the vote and give the Democrats a huge win.
I wished I could be so optimistic. They have had endless chances to reject him and haven’t. It’s almost like Putin has some leverage on a bunch of em lol.
He will get nominated, but hopefully my fellow Americans will not let him return to the white house.
I wish that were true, but I suspect that the American people have become too passive to resist a dictator. He won’t take over by force, but cloaked in legitimacy, just like Hitler and Mussolini did. Heck, you don’t even have to go back that far. That’s Putin’s playbook, too. A Republican President also has a Supreme Court that favors very strong presidential powers and a permanently divided and largely impotent Congress. No real resistance there.
So, what’s left? The police? American police would love having more power under a dictator. The public hates cops these days, and a dictator would restore their “rightful place” as respected and feared enforcers who will “clean up the streets”.
The military? Well, that’s a wild card. They may not support a dictator, but they also don’t want to start a civil war. I think a US dictator will give himself enough legal cover and legitimacy to convince the military to hang back from interfering in politics.
The most likely source of resistance is from individual states. However, I’m not sure what they can do, realistically. Secession would certainly start a civil war, which would play right into the dictator’s hands, giving him the perfect excuse to suspend rights and use the military for domestic purposes.
They literally had the chance to stop him during his second impeachment after the attempted insurrection. Anyone who didn’t do it then, sure as hell isn’t going to do anything now.
The last thing the GOP wants to do is piss off his supporters right before the next presidential election. The electoral college could have ousted him during the 2016 election (as people had floated around) too. There’s just not enough people are willing or have the desire to reject him. Many would love to have him as a dictator, they just need the right pieces in the SCOTUS to say it’s in the constitution.
He’s 100% going to be the nominee now. Even if he goes to jail, he’s still going to be the nominee. The time for anything different is LONG past.
Why do you think there will be violence before the election, but after Trump’s nomination? In this scenario, in your mind, who are the ones that kick off this violence?
Historical evidence on the rise of Dictators. You have to opress your opposition through violence to look strong. I foresee Kent State style responses from Trump loyalists in law enforcement.
You can only become a dictator one time, after that you are a dictator.
So he’ll only “become” a dictator on day one, the rest of his life hell just be a dictator.
And let’s not entertain the fantasy that his heath will catch up to him sooner rather than later, remember he has access to better healthcare than 99% of the population and it’s entirely state funded.
We’ll be stuck with him for at least a decade, but I wonder who will inherit the throne when he’s gone?
Has there ever been a dictator who relinquished power after “fixing” things? Yeah guys, I’m going to need some extra judicial powers and have the military become my personal army, but it’s just temporary, I swear.
Yes, the original roman ones. This is the origin of the word. They were appointed for emergencies with a lot of power.
They all gave up their position after a while except for Caesar. When Caesar was appointed as a lifelong dictator, he was shortly after assassinated by most members of the senate. But the turmoil led to the Roman Empire not being “democratic” anyway.
Slight correction, he wasn’t assassinated by most of the senate. There were about 60 conspirators out of 200-300, and only a dozen or so actually participated in the assassination (and only 5 actually confirmed to have stabbed him while still alive). Regardless, it’s still true that they came to that conclusion after Caesar was declared dictator for life and started taking away senate power
Yeah, but he was rustled since they wanted to disband his legions and all that. Who wouldn’t be
Despite his relatively old age, [Cincinnatus] worked his own small farm until an invasion prompted his fellow citizens to call for his leadership. He came from his plough to assume complete control over the state but, upon achieving a swift victory in only 16 days, relinquished his power and its perquisites and returned to his farm.
The original office of dictator as defined in the Roman Republic was exactly that,
It was literally the office of “we have tried literally everything else and still have a problem, you there, you seem like a not idiot person, you can do basically anything you want for the next six months or until you solve the problem, after that we’ll make cool statues of you if you do a good job.”
Given how the reality can get modified over long periods of history, I have to wonder how much those old dictators stepping down were motivated by threats of stabbing if they didn’t.
Well one of them was Cicero, who would have been VERY loudly indignant had there been such a threat,
Not because he intended to defy it, but because he’d be so personally insulted by any insinuation he’d be that kind of dirty politician.
Honestly it’d probably work better than our current system.
Just give one random guy carte blanche to run everything. Get immortalized if you do a good job. Get executed if you don’t.
And I’m sure lots of people would take it up, and think that they’d do a good job. And more than likely, they wouldn’t.
I’ve heard the term ‘benevolent dictator’ before, but it might be philosophical. It doesn’t seem to me that anyone capable of assuming the role could remain benevolent long.
I don’t think dictatorships are meant to be long term anyway, but I would be careful who I would hand over any power to.
Cincinnatus is always the classical example, as a senator who was named dictator twice and in both cases relinquished his power as soon as the crisis was resolved.
What’s less often mentioned is that the second “crisis” was just a prominent plebeian undermining the prestige of the Senate by providing cheap grain to the poor during a famine—Cincinnatus presided over the plebeian’s extrajudicial murder, and it’s that as much as his subsequent resignation that made him an eternal hero to the Senate.
To be fair until Augustus there was a particular taboo in Rome of coming off as kinglike, being one guy and making a point of stepping on the Senate’s toes was a VERY fast way to get yourself killed, see also The Gracchi Brothers and Marius.
Romans hated anything to do with royal aspiration so much that one of their most sadistic pleasures was to watch the former royals of newly conquered lands be forced to march in the victory parade of the lead general of the conquest before being ritually strangled. It took being a literal child for the Roman public to hold back from gleefully jeering you for having been a monarch, nevermind being willing to ask for you to be spared from being killed.
Basically just imagine a several centuries long stretch of peak Robespierre paranoia about anything to do with potential plots on kingly aspirations and you can see why some guy deciding to take state business on himself, especially state business that can earn a lot of public support, would be seen as a dictatorship worthy crisis to the Roman Senate.
Washington was elected in 1788 and re-elected in 1792. However both were unanimous, unopposed, and done solely by the electoral college. Adams/Jefferson in 1796 was the first proper election, after Washington set the 2-term precedent and relinquished power. That precedent was maintained until FDR served four terms during the First World War sequel, which led to the drafting of the 22nd Amendment to the US constitution limiting presidents to two terms in 1947. It was ratified by 36 of the 48 states in 1951.
Also while trying to remember the dates I read Section IV of the 20th amendment. What the fuck is this word salad? Is this the original “Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like??”
The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.
The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.
Commas were expensive back then.
“It is with great reluctance that I have agreed to this calling. I love democracy. I love the Republic. Once this crisis has abated, I will lay down the powers you have given me!”
–Chancellor Palpatine
Ah yes, the “just the tip” of fascism.
